Page 49 - AUG2018E

• Deal seal The cost of Rafale
deal has become one of the
most debated topics ever
since the Congress used it to
target the NDA regime

the Parliament and described it as the Dassault “and associated systems and Union finance minister Arun Jaitley,
“mother of all scandals”. While several weapons would be delivered on the that read: “Jaitely rubbishes wild allega-
parties belonging to the UPA kept away same configuration as had been tested tions on Rafale deal” without giving any
from the protests, it found support and approved by the Indian Air Force”. benefit of doubt to those making the
from the Left parties and the Aam Shourie described it an “enormous allegations.
Aadmi Party. scandal which jeopardises national Jaitley said in a blog post that there
The attack was bolstered by two security” and asked the government to “is not a grain of truth in the wild al-
former ministers who had served in make details of the deal public. Pointing legations repeated today nor anything
the Atal Behari Government-Yashwant out that offset guidelines of the govern- substantiating in the purported facts
Sinha and Arun Shourie, and a lead- ment issued on April 1, 2016, mention and voluminous documents mar-
ing Supreme Court lawyer Prashant that “all offset proposals will be pro- shalled to corroborate the baseless
Bhushan. They said there were no cessed by the Acquisition Manager and accusations”. He went on to say that
additional add-ons and yet the country approved by Raksha Mantri, regard- the “allegations constitute nothing but
will pay 1,000 crore more per plane as less of their value”, he said Dassault’s reprocessed lies by forces increasingly
compared to the earlier deal. They said deal with Reliance Defence could not desperate to prove their relevance”.
such an agreement between Reliance have happened “without a nudge and a He said, “those raising alarm about
Defence and Dassault Aviation, which wink” from the government. the alleged danger to national security
makes Rafale jets, should have come A joint statement issued by the ought to realise their responsibility
after governmental approval. three said, “Could an experienced and refrain from politicising for nar-
Former union minister Sinha, who manufacturer like Dassault have row individual ends those very matters
had been openly criticising the govern- picked a company that had no experi- pertaining to the defence of the nation
ment on various issues, said Bofors ence whatsoever of manufacturing that were consistently ignored by
“pales into insignificance” when com- aircraft...without the approval from the them and by those with whom they
pared to this “scam”. He and Shourie government?” It said a “private party sympathise”.
said statements of then foreign secre- which has had absolutely no experi- However, this explanation is not
tary S Jaishankar and Defence Minister ence in manufacturing aerospace and adequate and the government needs
Manohar Parrikar suggest that none defence equipment has been handed to come out with more details and
of them was aware of the new deal to an enormous financial benefit.” They clarifications on the deal while keeping
buy 36 jets, against 126 aircraft as per a demanded an audit by Comptroller and in mind national security aspects. The
Request for Proposal issued in 2007, for Auditor General. Congress and other opposition parties
which Dassault had been selected as it Surprisingly, barring a couple of are certain to milk the deal to tarnish
was the lowest bidder. newspapers, the media has ignored the the image of the government. There is
They also said there were no ad- issue. The press conference by the three no doubt a confidential clause between
ditional add-ons as per Indian specifi- was not covered by large sections of the the Indian and the French govern-
cations, as claimed by the government, media while some pushed it to inside ments which must be respected but the
compared to the original RFP. They pages. One of the prominent English clearing of certain doubts would help
quoted the joint statement by India and dailies gave the headline to a two the government in defending the deal.
France on April 10, 2015, which men- column report on the press conference,
tioned that the 36 jets to be delivered by which also included the statement of letters@tehelka.com

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